The video showed HDR, Geometry Shaders, and Tessellation effects. At least that's what the Epic voice over detailed about what effects were on display. It's probably not as flashy if most other demos, but I find it more of a technical demo than anything else. Reply

I think I know what he means. The demo looks great for a mobile device, but looks canned, like it doesn't have lots of light reflections, shader particles, like a hybrid between PS2 and PS3. Still good for a mobile chip.Reply

It looking good isn't unexpected given it's mostly a static scene set in a small corridor. The two characters basically walk and stand in front of the cabinet and occasionally the camera pans to show some sparks fly.Reply

Tegra K1 should hit retail next week (The Xiaomi Mipad) so hopefully we'll see how it really performs soon.Guess we don't know if this was on the quad A15 or the dual Denver and i haven't seen any updates on the Denver version release date.Reply

What benchmarks are those? Benchmarks like Antutu can be misleading, because they give too much weight to every core, so even if a quad-core A15 gets higher score than a dual-core Denver, it doesn't mean the A15 one is faster. In fact, Denver is likely to feel MUCH faster (some rumors were saying Sandy Bridge level).Reply

Much like the recent Watch Dogs "scandal", there are many effects that are useful only when taking screenshots or making gameplay videos, but are utterly useless for actual gameplay. SOME effects can make the game look better while playing (lighting, shadows, particles), but others just detract from the experience (DOF and some HDR) by artificially replicating the human eye's natural functions. It's redundant and cumbersome.Reply

Opengl 4.3 support is much more important then closer to metal support... Also if maxwell doubles gflop per watt then easily at 20nm you can have more then 1 teraflop at 5W TDP... Ironically that's not going to happen at desktop as tegra 1, 2, 3, 4, K1 are all unscalable very custom designs... thats why it takes a lot of time for each of them to appear... Also the fact that Nvidia got rid of all subsidies after tegra 3.. While intel subsidized the hell out of their mobile processors.. I Reply

The power differences aren't likely going to be that great just by going to 16nm finfet. The changes have been getting smaller as feature size has shrunk, starting around 32nm, iirc.Yeah, Nvidia could produce a chip like you describe above but not likely within the power budget of even a tablet.Now, two-three years from now is a different story.Reply

Nope.The keyword is: "Metal-enhanced Unreal Engine 4".One time they have to recode their desktop engine to replace OpenGL 4 API with a propietary API only a small fraction of people will use in mobile products. The other time they can use their OpenGL based 'desktop' engine which a lot of gamers already use, to drive future mobile products. So with an identical engine they can release a game for Android, Linux, Windows, Mac OSX.With Mantel not.Reply

"New features for game developers — Support for OpenGL ES 3.1, gives you capabilities such as compute shaders, stencil textures, and texture gather for your games. Android Extension Pack (AEP) is a new set of extensions to OpenGL ES that bring desktop-class graphics to Android. Games will be able to take advantage of tessellation and geometry shaders, and use ASTC texture compression across multiple GPU technolgies."

With the AEP you may as well say they're already there, or at worst fairly close. Either way, his point is they'll use the one EVERYONE can use more than direct attention to proprietary stuff in most cases. It's just smart and less work. Why code for metal if you can just do ES3.1 etc and port everywhere quickly? ES 3.1 is a subset of it's bigger OpenGL brother, so not sure what your point is. Portability is becoming king. At some point I think they will support full OpenGL in android, but to act as though they are completely different is not correct either. Why not support the full shebang if the chips can all do it at some point? I'm guessing 14nm versions of everyone's chips will do 4.4 etc. NV is there now, everyone will have to follow at some point. Would you rather brag you have 4.4 or DX 11_2 in a mobile world? I suspect Qcom's chips will add full OpenGL 4.4 sooner than later. You'll lose a discussion on DX vs. OpenGL in mobile unless winrt becomes 50% share or something vs. android/ios and I doubt that will happen ever. Everyone but MS is now pushing OpenGL and MS doesn't own squat in this arena so it would seem impossible to rectify that problem.

“Through our close collaboration with NVIDIA, Epic’s Unreal Engine 4 ‘Rivalry’ project demonstrated at Google I/O shows what’s possible when PC-class gaming technologies and performance are brought to mobile devices,” said Tim Sweeney, founder of Epic. “In less than three weeks we were able to port content built for high-end PC and the DirectX 11 graphics API to Android and Google’s AEP (Android Expansion Pack) extensions for ES 3.1. Developers can deliver incredible graphical complexity on a mobile chipset thanks to Tegra K1 and AEP.”

Those extensions DON'T make it open gl. Whatever the sum of extensions and egles, and match that with the highest core gl profile and then you have your compatibility.I'll say again that tesselation isn't a good fit for mobile. Geometry shaders, however, will be fantastic, as will bindless textures and multi dispatch... if they actually included the later two.Reply

Are you perhaps confusing Mantle with Metal? If so I can explain your mess around.Point is there is already a chip capable to run same engine in a different tech demo. And it's an amazing demo too.Reply

I'm not confusing it. It's just a typo, sorry. What I said was related to Metal. Metal is a propietary Apple only API. Of course you can port a tech demo or engine to whatever you want. And of course it will run on iOS using their propietary API. Why shouldn't it be possible?But you're completely missing the point.Reply

The point is (bloody hell) that everybody acknowledge TK1 is faster than A7, but nevertheless the latter is capable running similar demos!! U got it?So if you agree in this, u can realise this thing of Nvidia is not a miracle at all.Reply

The point is also A7 is capable to run similar things. Point is optimising the hardware you can do similar things Nvidia pretend to claim as unique. Point is I don't see the miracle rather than the usual Nvidia's claim every single year.Reply

There is no magic involved in software optimization. A7's GPU is capable of 115 GFlops, K1's is capable of more than 300. No amount of optimization can close such a huge gap, unless the developers on android and windows sides are a bunch of incompetent buffoons, which I doubt is the case.

Yes, A7 is powerful and can run some good looking graphics, but it definitely wouldn't be able to run them faster than a K1, again, given the programmers do it right.Reply

The "miracle" is that PC games can be ported to Android IN WEEKS, without special low-level hardware optimizations that only work with some devices, and most likely working better, too, since Tegra K1 GPU is much faster than A7's GPU.Reply

In weeks...I see. Than if they ask your collaboration even in hours...Yes TK1 is faster than A7, but the second is still running same demo. Given the fact that the are so many TK1 around that you indulge playing every hours. In less than few months will arrive devices with A8, meanwhile you will be dreaming the TK1. Question is where the TK1 is? I suggest you buying an Audi car and then run this demo developed for you in weeks.Reply

This is not a counter to Metal, this is just exposing some extensions to OpenGL ES to support some stuff that's not supported by default. Metal, Mantle, D3D12, etc are all completely new to-the-metal APIs.Reply

So can someone explain to me (Like I am 5) how a arm chip with 192 shaders can do this and my 290x struggles to get 60 FPS at 1440p in a number of modern titles?If they can do this with 192 cores why are we not seeing photorealistic games on XBOne / PS4 / PC?Reply

Most games run pretty good when nobody is moving and nothing is happening.

They also tend to run really well indoors because there is much less to render. I'm sure you've seen many games with graphics options for draw distance and the like.

Pretty much guarantee that if you had 10 of these guys on screen, shooting at each other, with explosives and smoke grenades, on a city street.... with cars, lightposts, lots of buildings, and multiple city blocks visible... it would run awful. So you can either have a game that looks pretty but isn't any fun, or that is fun but looks ugly, or you need a 290x :-)Reply

or 780ti ;) which wins almost everything in a res where we actually play (less than 2% above 1920x1200 and most have TWO or more cards above it). Above this you usually see the benchmarks at 30fps avg or less, and that is pointless to show. Mins are worse. It baffles me why anandtech keeps showing situations where you're already under 30fps avg and claiming a victor. No not baffling, the AMD portal explains it ;) Or rather a lack of an NV portal? Either way bad.

No way around that or the constant Nv digs even if it's insinuated or just said blatantly. IE how dumb is it to talk up Qcom's DX features when mobile is all about android/iOS which can't use it? Talking as if Qcom surpassed K1 with this junk? I don't see google or Epic using Qcom's chips for demos. Instead the talk was about how fast they got off of DX and into OpenGL...LOL. If you read anandtech's post you might actually think Qcom's dx comments are important. ROFL. Whatever. As the comment section on that post shows, just more anandtech bias BS whenever they can vs. NV. There are many T4 devices out, but you wouldn't know it if you only read anandtech. They claim they can't get anything for review when asked about this. Really? Can't be bothered to BUY a T4 device just to test then sell or something in their forums? Ebay etc? If you really wanted to benchmark NV stuff you'd find a way, or a place that would loan you one, just like with everything else hardware sites get on loan (memory, SSD, mboards, cards etc for testing). I'm sure if they listed some device they bought on Ebay or something as ANANDTECH, saying it was only used for testing, knock of 10-20%, it would get sold (if not to a forum user looking for one on discount). Anandtech isn't exactly poor and could easily absorb a $50-100 hit once to have something other than shield in their benchmarks (which they only show in SOME benchmarks anyway).Reply

Oh look another massively curated and controlled tech demo that has nothing to do with what the chip could do in an actual game. Show a real world working 360/PS3 game running in real time at a decent framerate and I will be impressed. Otherwise its more smoke and mirrors. Reply

Your post makes no sense. San andreas is a significantly older game than Bioshock, and even remastered will look nothing like it. You might as well have replaced "San Andreas" with "Doom 95" in your example.Reply

It makes sense with a bit of perspective..That San Andreas on maximum settings would require a beefy 2005 PC, yet it runs on a freaking Galaxy S3.Now, compare the K1 with the chip in the Galaxy S3Reply

San Andreas by no means required a "Beefy 2005 PC." I was able to trivially max that games settings when it launched in 2004 and I didn't even have a top of the line PC back then. The graphics are actually really terrible. Go watch some videos of it then go look at Bioshock, it's night and day. Unreal 3 in its infancy is like 10x more capable than what San Andreas puts out.

Again you are missing on the context and lacking perspective.First, the Android San Andreas is much better looking than the pc version..higher resolution, improved draw distance, more detailed character and vehicle models, real time dynamic shadows and reflections.Second, and I repeat, Tegra K1 GPU is roughly 20-30 times more capable than Mali 400MP4 in the S3.

And speaking of Unreal 3, there are many Android games running it, for years now Reply

No I am not lacking perspective, I'm being realistic. I've watched videos of the new San Andreas, it's still garbage compared to 2007 Bioshock. And yes, Unreal 3 has been available, but not until recently have the games looked anything close to even UT3 or Bioshock quality.

I'm also not arguing about the capabilities of a K1, I'm just still asserting that your initial comparison is absolute garbage, because San Andreas decked out on Android doesn't even scratch the surface of what Bioshock looked like 7 years ago.

Don't jump the gun. Mobile has made impressive leaps and bounds, but don't overestimate the capabilities.Reply

Trine2, Serious Sam3 on K1, Portal and Half-life2 both run fine on T4. So how well do you think K1 does? We'll know when we see all the ports aimed at K1 soon for shield 2 which is only a month away today. Certainly the Ssam 3 playing pretty ok on beta crap is impressive.http://www.theverge.com/2014/1/6/5278192/nvidia-te...

http://steamcommunity.com/app/41070/discussions/0/...Dev speaking about K1 & Ssam3 port. I'm fairly sure fps dips at verge were due to the nature of the beta hardware/software. This news was Jan2014, they've had another 6 months to tweak shield 2."AlenL [developer] Jan 6 @ 1:08pmYes. We were even more amazed than you are. That's the first version of SS3 for Android. And it would not have been possible without this Tegra miracle. :) This chip looks like something that will knock everyone's socks off. We couldn't believe how good it is. It supports full OpenGL4, and we practically directly ported the entire PC game to it, along with PC content. It was not cut down like e.g. for Xbox 360.

As an additional point, when we compiled the code without errors and ironed the glitches in initialization code, as soon as it started the graphics correctly for the first time, it went right through the intro sequence, and into the game. Without any noticeable visual errors. I think I can safely say this is the first time ever. Normally, we'd have a few weeks of unexplainable black screens, inverted colors, garbage in textures, broken shaders, etc, until it looks ok visually. With K1, this just worked."

The dev seems fairly clear about how potent it is and how easy it was to work with correct? Is serious sam 3 "doom95" to you? 2011 game right? Trine2 isn't exactly ugly either ;)Reply

Please don't take my post out of context. I was pointing out that his statement had no meaning. He made the assertion that

"An older GPU (S3) is capable of running a game with worse graphics (San Andreas), therefore the new GPU (K1) will run the better game (Bioshock) without a sweat."

This is an illogical statement without benchmarks backing the numbers because there is no overlap. i.e.Assume the following statements:-We have two variables, 's3' and k1', which are GPU performance-We have two variables, 'gta' and 'bs', which are the performance requirements for both games-Given: 'k1' > 's3' (The K1 is more impressive than the performance of what's in the S3)-Given: 'bs' > 'gta' (Bioshock is more demanding than GTA)-Assume: 's3' > 'gta' (The S3 can handle GTA)-Conclusion: 'K1' > 'gta' (by transitive property), but there is no logical conclusion that 'k1' > 'bs'Reply

I'd say Ssam3 is more taxing, judging the vid/cpu requirements here and ram also. If K1 could run SeriousSam3 6 months ago ALMOST (again surely tweaked more 6 months later), then bioshock should be doable. Even if a few things get turned down, it would run. This is a 2007 game vs. 2011 game here, so if they can do that already you should get the point vs. a 2007 game and NV is VERY good at running unreal engine. I have no doubt they know what to tell a dev to turn down in order to massively improve perf on any unreal game.

The Ssam3 dev even says directly it wasn't cut down like xbox360. That says quite a lot to me especially being a post from 6 months ago. I'm thinking it will run smooth at launch 6 months later. From the devs comment NV wasn't far off saying their K1 is ~xbox360/ps3 level. Tricks Kepler can do that those really old units couldn't probably make it above them most of the time. Time will tell, but the dev's comments are at least showing it's in the same league.Reply

That's great, and I accept that that is likely true. I'm not trying to claim otherwise. But my MAIN point of this entire string of comments was about San Andreas being a really low end game, so being able to run that doesn't prove anything. I'm not trying to make any assertions at all about the power of the K1.Reply

"Don't jump the gun. Mobile has made impressive leaps and bounds, but don't overestimate the capabilities."

I took that, along with your other comments to mean you aren't that impressed ;) So I attempted to correct it with a more meaningful comparison. SSam3 BFE is NOT san andreas so proves MORE right? You can say that quote wasn't directed at K1, but that's what the whole page here is about, and the comments too. If you weren't saying it about K1 then I'd think you meant all of mobile which would include K1 etc. You're saying it proves nothing, so I gave something that DOES prove something since it seems you're casting doubts here. I'm saying the gun "hasn't been jumped" so to speak ;)

It's a desktop based gpu, we shouldn't be surprised it's quite a leap in visuals etc. We'll see what the rest come up with to combat it (and all future NV socs now that they are desktop based), but K1 is the gaming gpu bar now for at least tablets, if not some high-end phones which NV is still interested in (they're only giving up on the low-end which isn't where the massive profits are anyway). If power is low they can pair it with any number of modems since they don't seem to want to integrate one at this time. Considering krait is no longer in house (off the shelf IP) it should be anybody's race even without the modem integrated. Off the shelf IP won't have krait like power/perf advantages until they go back in house a year later.Reply

Probably never. Nvidia despite all their hype has been pretty much shut out of the mobile world the last couple of years, at least in the west. The Tegra 4 was never used by anyone and this chip has one Chinese tablet to show.Reply

I'm not sure that's all but you should get the point. Also, how can anyone use something that is NOT SHIPPING to oems yet? There is a reason shield comes first. It allows them to showcase the product in something that is lower volume until they can fully ramp a quarter later. Do you see any S810 products available? NO. Because you can buy what isn't shipping yet. See the point. You're not making sense. You're either ignoring the facts (well not like Anandtech would tell you all the T4 products, they hate NV, hence the AMD portal while NOT having an NV one...LOL), or you just hate NV so blatantly lie. Which is it? Or just plain ignorant? K1 has one tablet that will likely not be a HUGE volume seller so NV can accommodate them. You can't supply someone like HP/Toshiba/Dell/Google/Asus until you've ramped up. But note also, K1 was all over the show floor at Google I/O (it's in their AndroidTV, Automotive stuff, 9in Nexus etc).

And other devices are coming, here's the list from wikipedia already on the way or here:Jetson TK1 development board,Lenovo ThinkVision 28, XiaoMi MiPad, HTC Nexus 9,Google Project Tango Tablet, Acer Chromebook CB5, nVidia Shield 2. Not a bad start for a device barely shipping. Start reading more than anandtech, you'll get more NV news ;)Reply

One more comment on S805:http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2014/05/21/w...Where are all the S805 devices? :)Samsung Galaxy S5 LTE-A (Korea)Wikipedia only lists one.http://www.cnet.com/news/6-cool-things-that-your-n...Anything past ref devices besides the listed one? Seems K1 has a lead and both are shipping if only barely I guess (to OEM's anyway). But you can BUY some K1 stuff now. Jetson, Tango not sure about mipad yet (I'm not in china...thank god). Note 4 is rumored to have S805, but not confirmed AFAIK. So you should get the point, things that aren't shipping massively (ramped yet) don't show up much, but K1 appears to have the lead vs. a SOC that was supposed to ship in May according to Qcom.

T4 was also in BungBunggame's Kalos. Not sure if wikipedia is missing more. Oh one more was Toshiba Excite Write (wikipedia only lists the PRO). The note7 is made by PNY, EVGA, ZOTAC, Gigabyte, and Xolo (so you can count those as one or five devices I guess). Few more, HP Slate 8, and Slate 7. Tegra 4 used by nobody? FALSE.Reply

However, it's hard to be very excited when Google can't even get Epic to port any Infinity Blade to Android and when they are asked why, they routinely say because the performance isn't there despite multiple demos running the Unreal Engine showing the hardware exists.

Other games seem to make money off Android, so why can't Epic? This tempers my enthusiasm whenever an Unreal demo is used even though I know other games on Android do use the Unreal engine...Reply

It's not that it can't be done, it's apple cash that stops this. Infinity Blade is apple only. They paid for Infinity Blade 1, 2 and 3 to be APPLE only. And yes the power is there, but what do you expect Epic to say? They can't exactly force Apple to let them port to anything else if they paid for a forever exclusive deal. They may have even paid enough to get them to blame perf, which clearly isn't the problem. With $140B in cash this should be no surprise when it happens. Apple can buy whatever they want pretty much, whether it's lies, preferential treatment, exclusive crap etc.

removed the last link to infinity blade LIKE games since being called spam for some reason.But yeah, there are many unreal3 engine games out already on android and also some great looking ones NOT on unreal.

Serious sam HD 1st & 2nd encounters coming soon too says croteam. I've played most of the stuff they're all porting, but it won't be long after they re-collect on these old games that they make new stuff aimed directly at the top shelf hardware on android (knowing even the junk from the next gen will have top end power a year later anyway so not long before all can play your game).

I can't wait for their new stuff. Clearly devs are interested in android if looking at GDC 2013 & 2014 surveys. HUGE interest. When 20nm versions hit we should start to get out of the ports and into great new content. I expect mostly ports of great games for the next year. Sure there will be some great new content too, but more economical to port and collect on old stuff first since most never sold more than 10mil copies and there are a billion active android devices who clearly haven't played all the old PC/console great games etc. The ports will pay for the new stuff at some point so I'm all for anything they think is worth porting. I thought I'd wait out 20nm shield (r3?) but I'm starting to re-think that. If it's even more feature laden than shield r1 I might just have to buy depending on price. But I can easily wait out a drop or special if needed ;) Android gaming is moving up, no doubt about that with K1 and every soc on 20nm after it. They should all be K1 level by then even on the low end, so more reason to aim higher with graphics etc.

Jeez, one link and called spam? For what? Anandtech get tired of my posts? LOL.Reply

An Nvidia Shield with this GPU, a 1080p screen and some minor revisions to design would mean I can finally get back into hand held gaming! I'm pretty excited. Streaming a game from my desktop is a pretty niche use case scenario, but I could see using it a little. More importantly, having something that would last more than 2 hours while gaming on it would be awesome. Especially if they get some "real" video games on it. Like Civ and Total War. I could see playing chivalry on it; so hopefully it'll have tri-band 802.11ac.

720p is 1280x720, a quarter of what's actual Android smartphone and tablets are offering as resolution. It's interesting to see a demo for 2 years old-devices, or for low-end devices that WON'T use the K1.